Somewhere in your house there’s a box. It contains video of your wedding. Baby’s first steps. Dad in that hideous sweater, waving at the camera.

Those tapes are dying in that box. Not someday. Now.

The last VCR ever manufactured rolled off the line in July 2016. Every working machine left is at least a decade old, and nobody’s making parts.

🛠️ Your DIY weekend

Want somebody else to preserve your videocassettes? iMemories costs $29.99 or more a tape. Legacybox fall to roughly $20 each. Walgreens starts near $34.99. Easy, but it adds up fast if you have 40 tapes.

Doing it yourself is cheaper. Buy two things to work with your computer’s USB port and free storage.

1. A VCR. Copy and paste this into the eBay search bar: “VCR VHS 4-head hi-fi tested working.” “Tested working” filters out the junk, and 4-head hi-fi models give you the best picture and sound. Expect $50 to $80. When you’re done with the VCR, you can sell it on eBay to someone else.

2. A capture device. A $110 Portta VHS-to-digital converter is my pick and includes the red, white and yellow cables. This cheaper option runs about $45. The difference? It needs a PC and software like QuickTime to record, while the Portta works by itself.

Take the colored cables from the back of the VCR into the capture box, USB into the computer, press play, press record. Transfers run in real time, so a two-hour tape takes two hours. Make it a weekend project with a kid who has never seen a tape rewind.